Paste a link, and your listing becomes the brief

A listing and a brief are written for different readers. A listing leads with the photo that stops a scroll and the words that close a sale. A brief leads with the photo that shows the object plainly and the words that say what it is. When you upload, you make that choice. When you paste a link, the listing's choices come across unedited.

That is not an argument against the link. For a listing that is already built like a brief, pasting is the fastest way into a shoot there is. It is an argument for looking at the listing first, for about a minute, in the way the shoot is going to read it.

What a pasted link sends

• Up to five photos, in the listing's own order. Anything under 8 KB is skipped as an icon or a spacer, and so is anything that is not a JPG, PNG or WebP.
• The first of those photos becomes the reference. It is the one the film is conditioned on, frame by frame, so it decides what the product looks like in every shot.
• The title, the price and the start of the description, joined into one note of up to 500 characters and read alongside the photos, exactly where a note you had typed yourself would go.
• Nothing else. Not the reviews, not the rest of the store, and not the gallery beyond the fifth photo.

The first photo is the one that matters

On most listings the first photo was chosen to sell. It may be styled, cropped tight, set on a table among props, or carry text laid over it. That is often the right choice for the listing and the wrong reference for a film, for the reason an earlier post on this blog gives at length: your best photo is usually the wrong one to upload. With a link, that argument applies without the choice. Whatever the listing puts first, the film starts from.

The failure is quiet. A lifestyle scene hands the shoot a product that is small in the frame and partly hidden behind something else, and what the shoot cannot see, it cannot hold true. The film comes back well made and slightly unsure about your product, and nothing in the process points to the photo as the cause.

The next four photos

The rest of the gallery arrives in order too, and it decides how far the camera may turn. If the listing's next photos show the back and a side of the same product, square-on, the film can turn onto them: a well-built listing hands over the turn for nothing.

If they show the other colourways, the packaging, a size chart or the product being worn, they widen nothing. Another colourway is a different product as far as the film is concerned, not another side of this one, and packaging and charts are not the product at all. They are not harmful. They simply spend places that a photo of the back could have used.

The words are read as direction

A listing's title and description are written for a buyer. The shoot reads them as a note from you about the film. A description that says what the product is made of and how it is finished helps, because that is exactly what a director wants to know. One that is mostly gift suggestions, delivery times and a returns policy spends the note on things no film can show.

The note stops at 500 characters, so a long description is cut off partway. If you type a line of your own direction as well, it goes first, ahead of anything taken from the listing, so it survives the cut. One sentence about the mood you want does more than the listing's whole description.

Where it works, and where it does not

• Shopify stores work best. For a Shopify store, Nitaris reads the product's own data rather than the page around it, so the photos and the title arrive clean.
• Etsy, eBay and WooCommerce listings, and most other product pages, are read from the product details the page publishes.
• Amazon often refuses the fetch altogether. When it does, or when any site does, the studio says so and asks you to upload the photos instead. Nothing is created and nothing is spent.
• The link is a web-studio door. In the Shopify app you pick the product itself, and the app reads that product's photos directly.
• If you add even one photo, the link is set aside. A photo you chose beats one pulled from a page.

Check the listing before you paste it

• Look at the first photo on its own. Is the whole product in it, evenly lit, with any label readable? If so, paste. If it is a scene, a collage or a photo with words across it, upload a plain photo instead, or move a plain one to the front of the listing if that is the photo you would rather buyers saw first anyway. Do not reorder a listing that sells for the sake of one shoot.
• Look at photos two to five. The back and a side of the same product, square-on, buy the turn. Anything else is ignored for that purpose, which is fine, but it will not widen the film.
• Read the first few lines of the description as a director would. If they describe the product, leave them. If they do not, type one line of your own before you start.

The short version

A pasted link is not a way round choosing the brief. It is your listing, sent as the brief. The first photo becomes the reference, the next four decide how far the camera can turn, and the words are read as direction. When the listing is built like a brief, paste it. When it is built only to sell, upload.